The present invention relates to a flick rammer for artillery rounds with a loading tray that is positioned in alignment with the powder chamber at a prescribed distance to the rear of the gun and accommodates the round and with a mechanical acceleration component that engages the rear of the round and is connected to a cylinder-type drive mechanism.
Loading an artillery weapon involves thrusting a shell, which may weigh 50 kg or more, far enough into the barrel at a speed of at least 1.5 m/sec to force the soft-metal positioning ring of the shell into the conical section of the powder chamber. The force must be powerful enough to prevent the round from dropping out due to its inherent weight even when the barrel is at maximum elevation, while simultaneously sealing off the front of the powder chamber.
Most known armored-vehicle rounds today are rammed manually by the crew. The barrel is appropriately positioned and the shell manually inserted into the powder chamber and thrust all the way in by the maximum exertions of two or three men with a ramrod. The drawback to this method is that the barrel has to be moved out of firing alignment while the gun is being loaded which is time consuming and requires re-aiming. This method of loading is also very labor-intensive and involves a lot of physical exertion on the part of the crew. Thus, the obtainable rates of fire are not adequate for contemporary warfare.
Various devices intended for eliminating the need for manual loading are known.
The device called a "chain rammer" employs two chains wound on a drum. The chains are united by a special mechanism in such a way that they hook together and become very rigid. The united chains emerge from the mechanism more or less in the form of a rod and can be employed to ram in the rounds. The major drawback to this known device, aside from the expense of the drive mechanism, is its relatively low ramming rate, which results from the necessity of extracting the chains from the powder chamber once the round has been rammed in.
Also known are rack-and-pinion rammers, which operate similarly to chain rammers. A drive mechanism advances a rack that rams in the round. The major drawback to this device is that it requires a lot of space at the rear of the gun to accommodate the rack and that much space is almost never available in armored vehicles.
Also known are telescoping rammers, wherein the round is rammed in with a telescoping pneumatic cylinder positioned at the rear of the gun. Although this device is more appropriate for integration into armored vehicles, it also involves the drawback of being very slow, consuming in particular a lot of valuable time in restoration.
Finally, what are called "flick rammers" are known. This type of rammer operates on the principle of accelerating a shell that is still outside the gun so powerfully that, once it leaves the acceleration system, it will fly freely into the powder chamber without being forced by any type of rod.
The acceleration in known flick rammers is obtained with either a tensioned spring or a controlled hydraulic cylinder.
One of the advantages of a flick rammer is the high speed at which the ramming is carried out, whereby in particular no time is lost in retracting it from the powder chamber. Known flick rammers, however, have one essential drawback. They involve too many controls, valves, and compression and equalization reservoirs in the hydraulic and mechanical systems. This decreases their reliability and takes up too much space inside the vehicle. Flick rammers that depend on springs also entail the problem that the spring cannot be tensioned enough when the charge is too small.